Contact: Sammy McDavid
Dr. Katrina Poe-Johnson, a Kilmichael physician and hospital chief of staff, was featured speaker for the university's Friday night ceremony at Humphrey Coliseum. Richard C. Adkerson, leader of the world's largest publicly traded copper producer, addressed the Saturday morning audience.
"As a young child I had so many dreams and, even when so few believed in me, I believed in myself," Poe-Johnson recalled. "That's what it takes to succeed in this world; a belief in yourself."
Poe-Johnson's success in serving the medical needs of her native Montgomery County earned the 1992 biological sciences graduate a U.S. Country Doctor of the Year Award in 2005 from a national medical staffing company. A wife and mother of two, she also has been honored with several state and area recognitions, as well.
After relating a parable about the planting of a seed, the physician shared several observations from her own experiences. "If you plant honesty, you will reap trust," she said. "If you plant goodness, you will reap friends; if you plant humility, you will reap greatness; and if you plant hard work, you will reap success. Be careful what you plant."
More than 2,000 MSU students received May degrees.
Adkerson is chief executive officer of Freeport-McMoRan and co-chairman of New Orleans-based McMoRan Explorations Co., an international oil and gas exploration and production business. A 1970 accounting graduate who completed an MSU master's degree in business administration a year later, the former Tupelo and Kosciusko resident made a $5 million gift to the College of Business and Industry in 2007.
Ironically, the successful international businessman anchored his remarks around Bob Dylan's 1960s antiwar song 'Turn, Turn, Turn" that became a hit by The Byrds rock group.
"There's a time for work and a time for play," he said, borrowing from the song's lyrics. "You are entering the world at a time of unparalleled opportunities and today, the economy of the United States is weak."
Whatever the current situation, Adkerson urged audience members to remember that "the broader world economy is exploding" and that evolving economic conditions beyond America's borders "will create a world of opportunities as Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and, eventually, Africa develop."
"The world will expand economically in a way we have not seen in history," he said.
As the present gloom fades, the future "will provide the world, and we in the United States, with unimaginable opportunities," predicted the graduate for whom MSU's accounting school now is named.